Toontrack DFH Superior 1.0 Reviews

[brandondrury]

Toontrack DFH Superior 1.0 Description
The sequel to the all time best selling multi-sampled drum library Drumkit From Hell. Toontrack Drumkit From Hell SUPERIOR includes all new drumkits with even more realism and user control than Drumkit From Hell, and it includes it's own built-in audio engine and interface for MAC and PC.

4 double DVD's with 35GB data.

85,000 Soundfiles (single hits only, no loops)

Easy customization "EASY-TO-USE" software sampler interface included!

No pre-processed sounds, all sounds have been recorded without any pre or post processing of the sounds.

Multiple tool configuration choices. Switch between brushes, drumsticks, rods or felt mallets. Felt
plastic or wood bass drum beaters

Multiple outputs with natural bleeding choices through all microphones; "Multiple Leakage Control"

Automatic interchanging state of sounds in all microphones, for example turn off bottom wire snares and all the bleeding will change accordingly

Randomized hits for non-linear performance

Programmed bleeding modes keeping RAM usage to a minimum

Cached loading, sampler only loads soundfiles requested by midi stream

Automatic Velocity mapping

Infinite rendering options when bouncing

Transmute groups, enables natural transformation between sounds, ultimate polyphonical hihat control and much more

Easy remapping of sounds, you just need to remap the instrument and it will apply on all sounds. No more than 5 minutes to do your favourite mapping.

Formats: AU, VSTi and RTAS for PC & MAC OSX

CC Support for ultimate e-drum hihhat control

[brandondrury]

Quality: 9
DFH Superior, to my knowledge, was the first drum sample library to really get drums to sound natural. By accounting for bleed and the way that drums interact in a room, they were able to achieve a new standard in drum sounds.

The only problem I saw with DFH Superior was the room. Their room is a good room, but it's one sound that I'm locked into and I really don't want to be locked into all the time. I could use reverb plugins to create new ambiance, but that never works the way I plan it. When I want real room sounds, I want real room sounds. I could never get the room sounds to give me that certain crack in my drums that I want. I would have preferred the room to have been larger and more live sounding.

The drum sounds in DFH are not processed ahead of time or at least they don't sound that way. While the drum sounds are extremely well recorded, they still sometimes need some work to achieve what you may be looking for. The drums have a midrangy (300-800) quality to them that I can't say I'm huge on. I generally like my drums with lots of meat in the low end and lots of high end crack. None of the drums in the DFH Superior library really pull this off.

For users who are new to mixing, their could be challenges with DFH Superior that they may not have suspected. Any user that doesn't take pride in their mixing skills and any user who would rather create music than learn mixing should obtain Toontrack's EZ Drummer, the newer Superior Drummer 2.0, or look at other products by BFD 2, Addictive Drums, and Steven Slate drum samples.

I found that EZ Drummer, which came out later, and is very popular on tunes posted in Bash This Recording hear at RecordingReview was making me jealous. I heard mixes with EZ Drummer who were achieving the tones I wanted right out of the box with little mixing.

Reliability: 9
Samples don't really have a "reliability" of sorts, but they do interact with recording software. When DFH Superior is ran in "robo mode" it uses between 1-2GB of RAM. That is a bunch! I found that sometimes pushing it to this level did cause my system to act reliable than it did when it was only using 150MB or so. (I have 2GB of RAM). Maybe this is DFH. Maybe this is something else. It's tough to say.

Overall, I do consider the DFH Superior library to be reliable.

Overall Rating: 8
Overally, I do think that DFH Superior is a great product. If I wasn't so hung up on this one style drum sound, I probably would be 100% happy with DFH Superior. However, I need a sound that simply isn't in this sample library quite frequently.

This doesn't make DFH Superior bad. It just means it's not all things to all people.

I'm very excited about getting Drummer Superior 2.0 which is supposed to be in this week. I think it's going to solve a huge portion of my drum recording problems.